Player toxicity is driving developers away from its forums?

This is both irrelevant and false, because (again) I can play enough Hearthstone to have a forum-ready account and never touch the game again. That hardly makes me a player.

I mean, you still have to create an account on Reddit/Twitter to post. You can read stuff without having an account (like I do!) but you can also read things in this forum without having an account.

And just to hammer my original point home: none of these random objections you’re raising change the fact that the devs don’t have to interact with the playerbase as part of their job description, and those who do interact with players do so voluntarily in addition to their regular duties. And because it’s a voluntary thing, they are going to do it in the platform of their choice. Which is not these forums.

I know what you are saying… I get it… people are not stupid… we understand all of that

My point is WHY - and noone can answer that except a dev… i just find it frustrating

and to be honest i do not have any social media accounts e.g. twitter or reddit and am getting sick of seeing twitter posted by others who are just players and the devs being dead silent here - but they seem to be forgiven or people don’t seem to care, so more power to them. I’m just blown away. Never seen a forum so useless… may as well delete it and be done with it… it is inherently useless as they don’t seem to read it let alone respond.

The why seems to be made up too… i mean did they all come on here at some point and say “you are all too toxic… we are outta here” ? If they did - could someone please link it… would love to read it

This is THEIR Forum as well as ours… they could do so much good here… instead they listen to redditors and the twitterati and nerf tier 3 decks but leave other stuff alone

"STUPID COMPANY!
“RIGGED GAME IF YOU DISAGREE YOU’RE A SHILL!”
“I DON’T LIKE THE FUNDAMENTAL DESIGN OF THIS GAME PLEASE YOU’RE BRAINDEAD JUST CHANGE IT TO THE WAY I LIKE.”
That’s what’s going on, being on the official forum for communication isn’t a requirement for their job anyways.

True, but we can speculate. And it seems pretty obvious to me that the reason why devs aren’t here is because they choose not to, for the same reason you aren’t on Reddit: because this isn’t a platform they want to use.

It’s been clear for years the devs were not interested in interacting with the community in these forums. I used to be pretty annoyed at that myself, until I accepted that that’s how the devs want it, and my personal annoyance has exactly zero impact on the matter. So why bother? Instead, I started checking in on Reddit and Twitter occasionally, mostly to look for updates. And that works for me: checking devs’ Twitter feeds and Reddit for news, the forums to discuss said news.

I profoundly disagree with this. Sure, there’s no devs here. But 99% of Reddit content is also not from the devs, and that doesn’t make it useless. Both sites aren’t about the devs talking with the players, it’s about the players talking with one another. And it’s not like either site is ignored entirely, since issues that are brought up in both sites often end up influencing devs’ decision (the changes to the reward track being the most obvious recent example). If you think the purpose of the forums is primarily for the devs to talk to us, then I can see why you’d think these forums are useless. I just don’t think that’s a primary (or secondary, or tertiary) function of the forums.

The Blizzard devs, to my knowledge, have never said that. Reaver’s news article linked in the OP refers to a different company (Paradox) whose devs did bring up toxicity in their own forums as a reason that discourages interaction.

Like what?

You’re assuming the complaints presented here are qualitatively different from the complaints on Twitter or Reddit. They aren’t. Paladin is seen as OP in all three sites. People complain about Tickatus in all three sites. People want to know why Wild is ignored so much in all three sites. People have a visceral hatred of Priest in all three sites.

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nah that was one of that type of posters we see here all the time claiming "blizzard said this " when answering this thread

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all very valid points… thanlks for clarifying

apologies… i do understand that the forums arent just for Devs to talk to us… it just feels that a lot of the weird speculation etc could be easily could be easily answered and stopped if Devs were more active - this thread is a great example - if they’d just say “hey we do not talk much on the forums because…” then they could answer that and then shut it for replies and be done but 100% understand if they did that with everything… maaann the craziness that would ensue

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What a non sense topic, all those useless discussion.

Let’s make it clear some people pay for it. If the dev behave like idiots while it is their job. Those people investing money have all right to treat them like idiots.

They seem to forget, WE are doing them a service playing their game. Without people playing their game and investing into it They would probably have to search for another Job.

Then opening post ask player to discuss in professional manner, what a stupidity never heard of.
If those dev are not happy, they can go and cry in their pampers.

Above of this, people begin to be disrespectful toward dev, because of the accumulation of their stupidity. Not instantly it takes time before people get fed up with something.

you’re the better part of 2 decades late on this one

it isn’t our job either, we post here voluntarily because we love the game and if they prefer to do it on a 3rd party site instead of the official one then something is wrong

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Nobody is wrong. It’s a matter of preference. You can’t be “wrong” for preferring one platform over another, just like you can’t be “wrong” for preferring one flavor of ice cream over another, or one console over another, or one game over another. Each choice boils down to your personal preferences, which are different between people because (spoiler alert!) people are different from one another.

i don’t know, it just makes sense to me to use official things, if i want a pair of nike, i go to a nike store, if i want a lv bag, i go to a lv store, if i want to post about hearthstone, i use the hearthstone forum

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This isn’t some Disney fantasy world. You make a bad game people will crap on you, you make a good game, people will crap on you. If you can’t handle it then get someone who can so we can get some good games made finally.

So, if you shop at Amazon, it’s only to buy Amazon products?

your statement is so ridiculous,
There is a reason why when you click on official link it send you to this forum.

Yes, because they got rid of comment sections in the news posts. It has nothing to do with where the devs (who again, aren’t required by their job description to interact with the community) choose to interact with the community.

Maybe if you hadn’t fired the only employee who still cared about and tried to improve this place and hadn’t dismantled the single program that rewarded and promoted positivity and constructive contributions just before said employee implemented a replacement, it would be better here.

Just a thought.

How you see it as our responsibility to build positivity when you refuse to implement even the most basic moderation and curatorship authorities is beyond me. You have outsourced moderation into easily abusable autobans from reports, and if an actual mod you’re paying starvation wages actually notices a report challenge they’re not given the time or authority to actually handle it.

Plus, we had that positivity - and your neglect let it slip away. Need I go into all of the times you said you’d take a more active role in these forums, and then go to ignore it for the next year while posting multiple times a week to Reddit? About the times when a blog post tells us to discuss an update on the forums, and links to Reddit and not here?

You own this forum, not us. You have admin power, and the responsibility to curate an environment where positive discussion can take place. You used to. I was there, I know, from the alpha stage when people were posting about games they played on Cockatrice. It was a lot better then than it is now.

The difference was, both of us cared then. Now we’re the only ones.

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or products which don’t have their own stores

the bootlicking program?

Mischaracterize it all you’d like, it was actually helpful to the people who came here looking for help and not to lord their alleged superiority over everyone else.

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i’ll never understand how you can help someone without any knowledge of the game but w/e

Not much to discuss.

This clearly isnt the reason why hearthstone developers dont frequent this forum.
Since day one they have never been present here to interact with the community.
And they would get a lot of positive responses on a post actually,or constructed critizism. And the replys they dont like they can simply ignore. Something that everyone who frequents the internets has gotten used to by now.